Fundraising for Large Campaigns: Preparing Materials

Welcome to Part 2 of the Fundraising for Large Campaigns blog series. In this series we will share best practices from your peers who have been successful with large fundraising campaigns. If you’re new to the series, you may want to start with Part 1: The Planning Phase.

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” ― Simon Sinek

The second phase of preparing for your large fundraiser is Preparing Your Materials. You and your team know that you have a great cause. Now it is time to communicate to the community why they should support your fundraiser. This preparation phase should include (1) articulating the need, (2) creating fundraising collateral, and (3) preparing your team.

Much of reasoning behind articulating the need was accomplished during the planning phase and as you received approval to run your fundraiser. By now you should have a good idea of:

What are you doing?

Why is it important?

Who benefits?

How much it costs?

However, you still need to put these ideas down on paper. In order to prepare your team and create stand-alone material, you need to have a clear and concise justification for your fundraiser. This will be useful later to share with your team and when you create fundraising collateral. Also, when you put your justification down in words, holes in your justification or reasoning become clear. It will help you work through these issues and ensure that you have a sound, articulate plan for your fundraising project.

When creating collateral, you should develop material for three types of media: websites, social media, and print. A few basics include a web-presence (like a Classmunity fundraising page), a Facebook page, a one page flyer, and a more detailed viewbook. Other more in depth examples for large capital campaigns include digital renderings, virtual flyovers, and shareable videos telling the story of the project. Make sure to have a consistent logo and project name across all of your materials and the information on where someone can donate!

Creating polished collateral for a large campaign an be a lot of work, and you want to have as high quality material as reasonably possible. You should reach out to the others on your team and your personal network to see who can help you with this material. Some areas you might consider asking for help include: editing and wordsmithing written material; a graphic artist who can help you design logos and flyers; a savvy social media maven to help you with a plan to spread the word; and an audio-visual expert to help you create a slick video. Although it’s great if you can find people who are professionals, you may find other teachers, parents, or even students may be able to help you with these tasks.